Chapter 3

1. The purpose of software versioning is twofold. First, it allows software engineers to validate whether an external dependency can be safely upgraded without the risk of introducing issues to production systems. Secondly, being able to explicitly reference required software dependencies via their versions is a prerequisite for implementing the concept of repeatable builds.
2. A semantic version is a string that satisfies the following format: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH:
   • The major component is incremented when a breaking change is introduced to the software
   • The minor component is incremented when new functionality is introduced to the software in a backward-compatible way
   • The patch version is incremented when a backward-compatible fix is applied to the code
3. In the first case, we would increment the minor version as the new API does not break backward compatibility. In the second...